Menu Nordmark universitet

Friday night was Valentine's Day. We had soup, bread, some prosciuttio and a couple of noce cheeses. And a really, really rich chocolate cake (not made by me).

Saturday lunch was a beef stew served served with cracked wheat.

Saturday dinner was a buffet rather than a full banquet:

Bread
Butter
Mustard
Cherry sauce (sweet and sour, cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper)
Cabbage salad (fresh parsley, leeks)
Soup of green peas (cinnamon, black pepper)
Hen pie (dates, raisins, spiced wine)
Pork sausages (smoky apple)
Lamb roast (garlic and rosemary)
Mashed carrots with almond milk (black pepper and sage)
Marchpane (rose water or saffron)
Apple pie (saffron, rose water)
Whipped cream
Cookies (saffron, cloves and nutmeg)

There were some late omissions, there should also have been:

Rice
Cameline sauce
Cheese balls

People seemed to enjoy the food. There was enough of all things, but there was not a lot of leftovers. The home-made pork sausages (not made by me) all disappeared but I think people had seconds and thirds of those, so there was no shortage. I assume there might have been more meat left if there had been an additional starch (rice).

Some short things to remember:

-make lists!
-cinnamon and peas are friends, the soup was nice even without the intended saffron
-bring extra saffron
-people are great, there was so much help and nice conversations in the kitchen

No flow

The food for Nordmark university was well received, but working in the kitchen was hard work. Things went slow, just in time or almost in time and I am very grateful to all the people who volunteered to help. Some of them was there all the way helping with shopping and setup, and that was really great.

I made gluten free bread for the first time ever. It was very fluffy, but I most admit to not particularly liking the flavour of it.

Erich for example, who not only made awsome sausages beforehand, smoked them on site while it was snowing but also came out in the kitchen to fix the last bit of getting them brown and pretty for serving. They were done, but didn't look done and I miscalculated the time it would take to get them browned.

Cheese balls

I tried making the cheese balls from Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin. First i read the English translation from medievalcookery.com, which sourced it from David Friedman's web site, and then I tried the original version found at http://www.uni-giessen.de/gloning/tx/sawe.htm. . I also found a German redaction at http://www.kochmeister.com/r/65519-kaesekuechlein.html which I used Google translate on. I don't really read German, but to me gebacken sounds more like baking than frying so I went with that option.

250 ml grated mature cheese
250 ml bread crumbs
1 egg
salt and pepper

I mixed the ingredients and rolled the dough inte balls, ended up with twelve I think. I then baked those at 200 degrees for ten minutes or so. The balls were nice. I had them for lunch with a salad and will probably make them for Nordmark University.

    

Sewing

I decided to try the Historical Sew Fortnightly.The setup is a new challenge every two weeks, but I might skip some of them. I can't quite wrap my brain around what to do for "Innovation" and "The Politics of Fashion " anyway.  I'm a bit surprised that I decided to do this since I don't really enjoy sewing and don't identify myself as a seamstress. I do enjoy having stuff when it's done though, so this is a way to actually get some things finished.

The Challenge: #1 Make Do and Mend
I have an old green dress that had three small holes near a seam in the lower skirts. I decided to use a patch on one of them and moved the seam 5 mm to get rid of the other two.

Fabric: Thin green wool

Pattern: One of the Herjolfsnes dresses, pattern originally made by a friend.

Year: 14th century

Notions: Thread

How historically accurate is it? Reasonable from the outside. It has lots of machine-sewn French seams on the inside. The patch is made from the same fabric as the dress and hand-sewn with silk thread. The thread is a bit too bright, but I find the result OK.

Hours to complete: Under 1. It was done about a week ago, but I didn't get around to blogging.

First worn: The dress itself maybe in 2008. It hasn't been worn after mending.

Total cost: Almost none, just some thread and scraps.

To stand on somebody's shoulders

When cooking a dish that I haven't done before there are several ways to go. I read original recipes, I compare them to modern ones for proportions and measures and I cook recipes redacted by others.

Today I'm going to try a couple of cookie recipes. Sweet and pretty isn't what I do best, so I'll work with other peoples recipes. I hope that if they have published it, it's probably a working recipe. Especially if there are pictures.

Today I'm trying these:

http://www.kiriel.net/cooking/laurelprize.html#1
http://www.medievalcookery.com/recipes/wafers.html

I haven't made wafers since I moved in with Nattfari, and only twice before that. First time went fine, second was horrible so there is also the element of trying the wafer iron on this particular stove. If things work out I will make cookies for Nordmark University.

Boiled bread

Last night we tried the recipe for Bread in a bag from An Early Meal. It was interesting rather than yummy, but went well with the viking theme.

We made the dough into fist-sized balls, tied them into cloth pieces and boiled them for half an hour. 

Hazelnut treats from An Early Meal

I tried the recipe for hazelnut cookies in An Early Meal. I have already had those made by other people and expected them to be good, which they were. I need to maka a couple of more batches before next weekend, though.

I also made walnut cookies by altering a recipe for walnut meringue cookies using honey and omitting the vanilla. There will be no more batches of those, but I will probably bring the ones I made. Meringue is a diva that requires really clean utensils and a good whipping, and I don't think that I could get a decent result doing that in an iron age kitchen. Substituting honey for sugar made a tasty cookie, but the meringue was somewhat strange, probably due to the water content of the honey. It could probably work in the right proportions, but I'm not really a sweet cook, so my patience for tweaking cookie recipes is small.